Titanfall “designed to be inclusive,” says Respawn, decision not intended to sell more copies

Titanfall’s beta is coming to a close soon, and Respawn’s Fairfax McCandlish has explained why the game was designed to be inclusive. The idea is that the shooter will make all play-styles valid, while still giving hardcore players room to shine. It is not, he said, a play for more sales.

Now; in a post on the Respawn forum, McCandlish explained, “Titanfall is designed to be inclusive. We want many different skills to be valid. For example, pure aiming (tracking or snapping) is often favored over leading in shooters, so we added weapons that have travel time or fire projectiles. Parkour and smart pistol reward maneuvering skill. Pilot combat is highly lethal (low time to kill) whereas Titan combat is low lethality (higher time to kill).

“Each play style requires different skills, and all are valid in Titanfall. The reason for inclusive design is not just to sell the most copies. Inclusive design gives you a wider variety of opponents and situations. It is part of the appeal of asymmetry in games.

“Testing a narrow band of player skill, like insta-gib or kar98 only servers definitely have their place too. Mirror matches in Street Fighter or Starcraft are also fun. However, we did not set out to design a narrow band game. Shooters famously have several already. What they do not have is a place for fans of different shooters to get together on common ground and settle things once and for all.”

It makes sense that keeping all play-styles relevant will encourage skilled players with particular approaches to rise above the pack, but what do you think? Is this a way of making sure Respawn sells more units? Let us know below.